Project Milwaukee: Creating a Tech-Friendly Ecosystem

Local colleges and universities are key players in developing the talent start-up and existing businesses are looking for. Still, the region has some way to go before all of the top talent is homegrown.

Consider the case of Brookfield’s Paragon Development Systems, or PDS. The growing IT company is working on collaborations with local campuses, but most recently has forged a partnership with MIT to develop new technologies for the healthcare industry.

Dr. Asif Naseem is the president and CEO of PDS. He believes there are a couple main issues that are keeping Wisconsin from expanding its tech industry. One is simply attracting people to the area with a vision and mission for the future of Wisconsin companies.

“I spent over 10 years in Silicon Valley and what they offer there is an ecosystem, a community that attracts like-minded, smart people; mentoring capabilities and opportunities, and perhaps most importantly venture capital that’s available there,” he says. “I think in Wisconsin, we have an opportunity to create that kind of ecosystem and I and PDS, we hope that we’ll actually in some small way contribute to that.”

The second issue is changing how information technology is viewed by large corporations in our region, which tend to downplay the importance of IT.

“The needs of the modern enterprise are very complex and broad and becoming more so. The workforce is geographically distributed and more often globally. The products are complex and becoming more so. Customer expectations of functionality and response time are ever-increasing,” says Naseem. “So I contend that information technology is the only way to put networks in place in those kinds of corporations to adopt to the complexity of the operations they’re running.”

Once upon a time, one of the key leaders in innovation in the Milwaukee area was Briggs & Stratton. The Wauwatosa-based manufacturer has been a national leader in building things with small engines, like lawn mowers. But the company ran into problems that many have faced over the last decade.